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3.75 AVERAGE
3.75 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I really enjoyed this one. The world building is fantastic and very weird ( in a good way)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty
Moderate: Genocide, Gore, Violence
explicit description of internal organs, a lot of squishiness
It’s a sci-fi dystopia with romance and political intrigue. I struggled with this book a bit because I was more interested in one protagonist over another. I even wanted more of some of the side characters. The world-building is really strong in this book and if you want to take a dive into some unique and dark sci-fi I recommend this one, especially if you like YA (this is not technically YA/teen but it read to me like YA/teen).
This book is as if you created an entire fantasy+sci-fi world full of a rich and unique environment, a religion, familial structures, politics and government and then created people out of popsicle sticks and danced them around throughout the dense environment.
Seske is petulant, ungrateful, spoiled and completely unconcerned with how her actions will impact the people of lower positions around her. She whines a lot. She said she wants to be the ruler but then does everything she can to sabotage that goal. She starts to see that the things her people are doing are wrong then just carries on being a spoiled child far longer than makes sense. Adalla's decisions only make sense viewed through the lens that she needs to be in certain places at certain times to advance the plot.
Book wants to be adult fantasy; there's lots of almost discussion of sexuality and almost sexual situations. But it's kind of juvenile and pathetic in it's avoidance (let's make a fake gelatin woman to get out of sex!). The book really suffers from avoiding all sexuality.
The book just ends. Where's the climactic confrontation with her evil sister? Where's the climactic anything?
This is a great setting for someone to take and make into a proper, complex and rich novel.
Seske is petulant, ungrateful, spoiled and completely unconcerned with how her actions will impact the people of lower positions around her. She whines a lot. She said she wants to be the ruler but then does everything she can to sabotage that goal. She starts to see that the things her people are doing are wrong then just carries on being a spoiled child far longer than makes sense. Adalla's decisions only make sense viewed through the lens that she needs to be in certain places at certain times to advance the plot.
Book wants to be adult fantasy; there's lots of almost discussion of sexuality and almost sexual situations. But it's kind of juvenile and pathetic in it's avoidance (let's make a fake gelatin woman to get out of sex!). The book really suffers from avoiding all sexuality.
The book just ends. Where's the climactic confrontation with her evil sister? Where's the climactic anything?
This is a great setting for someone to take and make into a proper, complex and rich novel.
adventurous
tense
fast-paced
Loveable characters:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
hopeful
lighthearted
medium-paced
Strong character development:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A complex detailed book that involves parasitization and exploitation of giant space-dwelling creatures by a far future human culture.
Seske Kaleigh is the heir-apparent to the matriline that leads her people. Her society is in the early stages of colonization of the current "beast", a process that involves massive modification to the beast's physiology, and will cause its death in only a decade or so. But Seske is ignorant of many of the details of the lifecycle of her culture, particularly in that its as cruel to its own people as it is to the beast that they inhabit. We get to see many of those details through her relationship with Adalla, a lower-caste organ worker and what they both discover about their society and the creature they inhabit.
This isn't Moya. It's squelchy and visceral (with lots of viscera to go around) with a detailed alien biosphere that seems designed to provoke feelings of disgust in the reader, particularly including body horror. The sociology here is interesting too, with a default-polygamous matriarchy, but one that has a strict class hierarchy as well.
This felt in a lot of ways like a better plotted version of [b:The Stars Are Legion|29090844|The Stars Are Legion|Kameron Hurley|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1455431216l/29090844._SY75_.jpg|21836212]. That's not to say that it doesn't have issues: the first part of the book sets up a strict social structure that is largely ignored without consequences in the second half. That includes powerful individuals with literal life-and-death power over our protagonists that just disappear later in the book. Knowledge that seems fundamental to people in this society just isn't known to our protagonists, who are outraged when they find out, making them seem beyond naive. As the story unfolds and it becomes clear that the central issue is of conservation and sustainability of the human society and rapprochement with the beasts, the process of exploitation of the beast seems to be trivially reversed with little consequence. And a brief glimpse of other human beast-dwellers with different societies is brief and inconclusive. (The gender-imbalance of the Serrata is weird, and who/what are the Great Queens? It's implied that they have a connection to the beasts, but how does that work?)
Overall, a frustrating experience. Hugely ambitious, with so much promise, that just needed more consistency and follow-through.
Seske Kaleigh is the heir-apparent to the matriline that leads her people. Her society is in the early stages of colonization of the current "beast", a process that involves massive modification to the beast's physiology, and will cause its death in only a decade or so. But Seske is ignorant of many of the details of the lifecycle of her culture, particularly in that its as cruel to its own people as it is to the beast that they inhabit. We get to see many of those details through her relationship with Adalla, a lower-caste organ worker and what they both discover about their society and the creature they inhabit.
This isn't Moya. It's squelchy and visceral (with lots of viscera to go around) with a detailed alien biosphere that seems designed to provoke feelings of disgust in the reader, particularly including body horror. The sociology here is interesting too, with a default-polygamous matriarchy, but one that has a strict class hierarchy as well.
This felt in a lot of ways like a better plotted version of [b:The Stars Are Legion|29090844|The Stars Are Legion|Kameron Hurley|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1455431216l/29090844._SY75_.jpg|21836212]. That's not to say that it doesn't have issues: the first part of the book sets up a strict social structure that is largely ignored without consequences in the second half. That includes powerful individuals with literal life-and-death power over our protagonists that just disappear later in the book. Knowledge that seems fundamental to people in this society just isn't known to our protagonists, who are outraged when they find out, making them seem beyond naive. As the story unfolds and it becomes clear that the central issue is of conservation and sustainability of the human society and rapprochement with the beasts, the process of exploitation of the beast seems to be trivially reversed with little consequence. And a brief glimpse of other human beast-dwellers with different societies is brief and inconclusive. (The gender-imbalance of the Serrata is weird, and who/what are the Great Queens? It's implied that they have a connection to the beasts, but how does that work?)
Overall, a frustrating experience. Hugely ambitious, with so much promise, that just needed more consistency and follow-through.
adventurous
hopeful
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
IIt's a fun, past-paced read that delves into repairing harm (if possible), the cost of justice, class divides and gender. The whole, reverse-sexism was an interesting take on the society as a whole, but I found the alternative family structure of 9 parents for every one child the most interesting world-building aspect (even if I'm still a little fuzzy on every parents' exact role in the family structure). Even the living-fish ship wasn't as interesting as all of that. I feel like the pacing at the end doesn't quite match the speed of the rest of the book, and it sort of feels like So Much happens So Fast and there's not a lot of time to process anything (an epilogue would have fit great here). Also, I felt that many of the secondary characters fell a little flat to me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Pregnancy
Moderate: Body horror, Death, Sexism
The body horror in this book includes includes disintegrating people into goo, finding their remains in stuff growing from the living ship and the ship impregnating the main character and tentacles coming out of her vagina (it makes sense in context). I personally didn't find these too graphic, but the latter certainly threw me through a loop.
adventurous
dark
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I loved this story. In terms of world building and overall plot, it's brilliant. The problem is that there's so much going on that none of it gets the "screen time" it deserves. It feels like the author thought they were running out of space, so they had to cram a complicated story into a small book. About halfway through, plot points are getting tossed out so fast and with so little description that it starts to read like a breathless first draft, desperately putting all the ideas down on paper as quickly as possible.
I'm still probably going to read the sequel, cause the concepts were fantastic.
I'm still probably going to read the sequel, cause the concepts were fantastic.
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
emotional
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes